X's location tool shows revenue sharing incentivizes US political content from international sock puppet and bot accounts, making polarization a side hustle
www.404media.co/americas-pol... @casuallylucid : “The only thing revealed by this transparency is that social media companies do not give a f*ck about this.” — Our attention is the product — There are tutorials in many languages on how to exploit that for profit, not just to stir the pot — AI makes it so easy to exploit now and everyone wins but you Joseph Cox / @josephcox : New from 404 Media: X has shown where accounts are actually being run from, revealing many MAGA accounts are actually grifters in Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. But the situation is much, much worse. Entire guides specifically on how to squeeze US audiences with AI. — www.404media.co/americas-pol... Jason Koebler / @jasonkoebler : X's location “transparency” feature showing many MAGA accounts are based internationally reveals what we already knew: The world is using American social media and American politics as a slot machine and social media companies are directly incentivizing this: — www.404media.co/americas-pol... Threads: Aaron Parnas / @aaronparnas : I truly am shocked the mainstream media isn't talking about how a significant number of large maga accounts on Twitter are foreign actors influencing American elections. See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
X was already a high-engagement venue for political audiences, while reports in 2024 documented payments to users who post election misinformation, AI imagery, and conspiracy content. The platform's new account-location disclosure then made the geographic mismatch behind some prominent political personas more visible in earlier reporting on foreign-based MAGA accounts.
This report connects those two threads: political identity content is not only an influence vehicle but also a repeatable revenue tactic for operators outside the audience they target.
First-order effects
- Foreign-operated sock-puppet and bot accounts gain a clearer financial reason to produce divisive US political posts: engagement can translate into platform revenue rather than merely reach.
- X's location disclosure gives users and researchers more evidence about where accounts are run, but it also highlights that transparency alone does not remove the monetary incentive identified in the report.
Second-order effects
- Political-content producers can copy the same playbook through multilingual tutorials and AI-enabled production tools, increasing the supply of low-cost, high-volume partisan material competing for US attention.
- The disclosure puts pressure on X to reconcile revenue sharing with authenticity and manipulation concerns; advertisers, users, and political participants face a feed where apparent domestic grassroots activity may be commercially produced elsewhere.
Third-order effects
- If engagement payouts continue to reward inflammatory political material, US partisan discourse can become a form of cross-border attention arbitrage: operators buy or automate production capacity where it is cheapest and monetize audiences elsewhere.
- Location labels may improve attribution, but the durable governance question shifts toward whether platforms can distinguish legitimate political participation from coordinated, revenue-seeking impersonation without relying on disclosure alone.
The trend: Platform monetization is turning political engagement into a globally accessible creator market, while AI lowers the cost of supplying its most polarizing content.